Scene from Rob Roy

George Cruikshank's steel or copper engraving depicts a crowded tavern brawl drawn from Walter Scott's Rob Roy: kilted Highlanders thrust broadswords at redcoated soldiers while figures scramble across a smoky interior, barrels and broken furniture filling the margins. Cruikshank renders tartan with obsessive cross-hatched precision; the Scots carry the broad physiognomic exaggeration — jutting jaws, wild eyes — that his era applied routinely to Celtic subjects, a form of ethnic caricature dressed as romantic adventure. Cruikshank sits squarely in the Gillray–Rowlandson tradition of British satirical printmaking, where grotesque human types crowd a single frame to advance a narrative argument. That sequential energy — multiple figures, implied motion, dialogue implied by gesture — fed directly into the illustrated story papers and, eventually, the comic strip.